


Glory and Gore

by tricksterity



Category: Legion (2010), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF!Stiles, M/M, Magic!Stiles, magic!Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 10:34:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2769863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricksterity/pseuds/tricksterity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One ex-archangel.</p><p>One Spark.</p><p>One roadtrip across Nevada.</p><p>One chance to stop the apocalypse and save the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glory and Gore

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think you'll have had to have watched Legion to watch this, I'm taking quite a bit of liberty with it. It's more about the relationship between a badass magic!Stiles and a badass archangel than the actual plot of the apocalypse. I'll try to make sure it's easy to follow :)
> 
> I was listening to both Glory and Gore and Yellow Flicker Beat by Lorde when I started writing this, so it's a pretty good soundtrack.
> 
> and btw if you haven't seen the movie and want a visual, Michael is played by the brilliant Paul Bettany.

The night air was thick and heavy although it blew against gooseflesh-ridden skin like a cold breath. It had a quality to it similar to the calm before a storm, and in a way it was. The first stone had been cast, and the ripples were taking a while to resonate, but when they did there would be nowhere that was safe from the waves.

 

Michael, arms laden with bags of ammunition, paused in his tracks as his human eyes spotted a bright light that could barely be manmade. Tilting his head, he strode deeper into the darkened alleyways, the light from the Strip barely making it out here since the power had gone out. Nobody was worried about it. These were the backstreets of Las Vegas.

 

The light was cupped in the palm of a once-teenage boy, glowing pink in the night like neon, strong and unflickering as he drew it across the wall to leave imprints like he was taking a blowtorch to the brickwork, burning itself into the being of the wall without leaving a physical mark. It wasn’t any sigil Michael had ever seen, and the once-young boy had his eyelids dropped shut, barely concentrating as he followed his instinct. Michael didn’t need to have his improved eyesight to see the bright spark being nurtured in this young man’s chest, cradled by his ribcage.

 

“If you are seeking answers, there is an easier way to get them,” Michael spoke into the darkness, and to the boy’s credit he didn’t stutter or startle. His hand just stopped in its path, and he opened his eyes to see the light trail it had left behind, eyes filled with something like wonder and curiosity. With a smooth arc, he turned the sigil into something else, something like protection, before his light flickered out, the pathways burned themselves into the soul of the brickwork, and the alleyway was plunged into darkness.

 

Until the boy lit a flame in his palm.

 

The flame cast its light to his face, highlighting the slope of his slightly upturned nose, the moles dotted across his skin, his cheekbones, his eyelashes. It left in darkness the hollows of his eyes and the curve of his lips, pupils glinting like a cat’s. This boy was wonderfully _something else_.

 

“Are you saying I have to ask you what’s going on around here? You’re not exactly… normal,” the boy said, voice slightly deeper than Michael had thought it might be. He noticed that the fingers that cupped the flame like a lover had ink sluiced through the skin like waves, intricate patterns winding their way around his wrist and up under the sleeve of his leather jacket. Tendrils of it creeped up the flesh of his neck, just peeking out from the top of his shirt.

 

“I wouldn’t say your lightshow was particularly normal, either,” Michael responded back with an eyebrow raise, and the boy acquiesced with a nod and a tiny twist of his lips.

 

“I’ll say who I am if you do,” the boy shot back quickly, and Michael stared at the boy in contemplation. Most of the time humans hid their talents, their _otherness_ , yet this boy wielded it like a weapon, wore it like a second skin, was comfortable in his otherworldliness, the instinct that came to something like he was. The boy barely knew what he was doing most of the time, but it made the boy seem unpredictable, not lost or confused.

 

“My name is Michael,” the archangel simply responded.

 

“Stiles,” the boy replied. “You wanna tell me what’s going on around here?”

 

“The end of the world,” Michael said quietly, notes of finality echoing in the shadowed night. The boy simply sighed and cast his eyes to the sky.

 

“Again?” he asked, as if being asked to take out the trash and not being told of the extinction of the planet. Michael tilted his head slightly, wanting on a visceral, deep level to know more about this boy, the curiosity tugging from within him almost as strongly as his cause, and he could not fathom why.

 

“You don’t seem to be worried,” Michael observed.

 

“The number of times my world has come crashing to it’s knees, you kind of get used to announcements regarding the apocalypse,” the boy replied, amusement on his face seen in the twist of his lips and light in his eyes. He smiled like he alone knew the secrets of the world. “Are you qualified to stop it?”

 

“Yes,” Michael replied. The boy took a step closer, and Michael could feel the heat from the flame flickering in his palm through his jacket. It was burning hot, yet the boy held it without a sound, the skin of his palms smooth, fingertips lightly calloused.

 

“You know, I’m pretty good at recognizing when something – or someone – isn’t human, but I’ve never quite seen anything like you,” the boy – Stiles – said quietly, brow furrowing just a little as he studied Michael’s face, just an inch shorter than the man.

 

“I could say the same,” Michael replied. He’d seen Sparks before, had followed their journeys through life, their rich and ruin, saw them raise themselves up or succumb to the temptations of their power and fall, corrupted. He’d never seen one quite like this boy.

 

Stiles’ lips quirked up at Michael’s reply, staring into the man’s eyes like he could trace the heavens, connect the dots of stars in his eyes; reveal the secrets of the universe. The boy seemed to brim with curiosity, emanating off him so strongly that Michael perhaps wondered if his own emotions were being reflected from the boy.

 

The thing that made Sparks so powerful was that their power was unpredictable, instinctual. It was raw willpower and belief, they closed their eyes and the world shifted around them. If a Spark wanting something possible, it became so. The world simply bowed to them; on it’s knees as the Spark shifted it to what they wanted. They were even harder to kill, with the potential of every natural force at their fingertips ready to be set free with a thought. Even Sparks didn’t truly know what they would do next, only trusting in and understanding their ability that it would be right.

 

Michael, heathen as he was, would fall to his knees to understand this boy.

 

“So what are you?” the boy asked, taking another step forward, flame flickering between the two raising it up slightly, illuminating the curve and dip of his lips, the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheekbones.

 

“I was an angel with a purpose, and now I am just a man with a mission,” Michael replied truthfully. The boy searched him, face poised as if he were about to burst into laughter at the first sign of untruth, but found none.

 

“Holy shit, you’re serious,” Stiles breathed. “Or at least, you think you are.”

 

“Whether you believe me or not doesn’t matter,” Michael lied. “What matters is that I have somewhere to be.”

 

“This apocalypse…” the boy started curiously. “It’s not just going to be a contained event, right? If you don’t stop it, it’ll destroy the whole world?”

 

“Yes,” Michael replied honestly. Stiles looked thoughtful for a second and stared down towards his palm, fire flickering gently. As he turned his palm facedown, the fire twirled around his hand like a gymnast, hovering above his knuckles, twisting between his long, painted fingers. Michael knew he had to leave, but he was entranced by this boy, the first Spark he had seen in literal ages to have fully realized their power. He wanted the boy by his side.

 

“I have people to protect back home, you know,” Stiles whispered so quietly Michael would not have heard him had they not been so close. “A pack. We’ve handled things like this before and we’ve come out on top… but a biblical apocalypse? What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t stop it before it reached them?”

 

With a smirk, the boy closed his hand and extinguished the flames, and the two men were plunged into darkness, only the dim light of the moon allowing Michael to see the reflection of light in the boy’s eyes.

 

“Well?” Stiles asked, and Michael’s first smile tugged at the corner of his lip.

 

“It will begin two days’ drive west of here,” was all Michael said as he turned around to walk to the abandoned police car. The boy had nothing with him, and Michael only bags of weaponry, but neither hesitated to begin the long drive to the outskirts of the Mojave Desert, Stiles’ feet kicked up on the dashboard and Michael comfortable at the wheel.

 

The first hour was silent. The radio was off, the police scanner flipped off expertly by Stiles, and they had left the golden lights of Las Vegas, emerging into the outer suburbs. Michael’s awareness of Stiles seemed to grow with every second, the warmth of his inner spark seeping out of his pores, filling up the vehicle, tickling the ex-angel’s skin. The boy didn’t even know he was doing it, and if Michael were wholly human he probably would not have noticed it. The primal magic seemed to circle around the roughly sewn scars on Michael’s shoulder blades where he’d sacrificed his wings. Whether the magic wanted to heal the skin, sew his wings back on or harm him, Michael did not know.

 

The silence was broken by a near-silent crackling noise that Michael first thought was the police scanner. Though from the corner of his eye he caught a light, and turned to see small purple sparks skipping between Stiles’ fingers as he tapped them on his thigh as though playing an invisible piano. The tiny particles of electricity were mesmerizing, more so the fact that Stiles didn’t even seem to realize that he was doing it, staring out the window at the passing buildings.

 

“You seem awfully trusting,” Michael commented, pulling his eyes back to the road. The boy made a confused sound before he noticed the subconscious manifestation of his powers, and snorted.

 

“I’m usually not,” he said, raising his hand to eye-level, watching the sparks jump between his fingers like they were made of metal. “Believe me.”

 

“Why do you believe me?” Michael asked. The sparks slowly went out, and Stiles chewed on his lower lip, tapping his fingers quietly on his lap. Michael did not know what to think when Stiles stopped the tapping almost violently with his other hand, entangling his fingers to stop them from doing so.

 

“I’m not sure,” Stiles finally replied after a few minutes of silence. “But after all I’ve seen, an archangel fallen from heaven to help out the human race doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. Even though I don’t necessarily believe that you’re an angel, much less the archangel Michael, but honestly, I’ll only be a little surprised if you are.”

 

“You still took my word on very little,” Michael replied, ignoring the desire to prove to this young, brilliant boy that he was who he was, although he had never before experienced pride. As an angel, he was able to process emotions logically, but as a human they seemed to spill from within him – raw, primal, unable to be controlled. This was what being human was about. This was what was worth saving, what his other brothers and sisters could not feel.

 

“You saw me scrying in that alleyway. I could feel that something was wrong and was trying to search out what it was, and you come to me explaining everything. Call me stupid, but that makes a lot of sense,” Stiles replied. The boy wound his window down and stuck his hand out, waving his fingers about in the warm air that rushed past. He tipped his head back onto the headrest and shut his eyes, basking in the warm sun, and Michael could barely equate this young boy as the same one he’d met in the alley barely an hour previously.

 

“And now you’re willing to travel with me to stop an apocalypse you know nothing about?” Michael asked. Stiles tipped his head down onto his shoulder and opened his eyes to lazily look at the angel. In the light of the rising sun, Michael saw that the boy’s eyes were a shade of golden-amber resembling sunshine through whiskey, and something tightened in his throat.

 

“When you run with wolves you get very adept at learning when someone lies; you were entirely truthful. There’s a humming in the restless summer air that I’ve been felt in my bones for days and you gave me answers. That, and I’ve got people to protect,” Stiles replied. The boy closed his eyes again, fingers languidly moving in the hot wind. Silence descended again in the vehicle, broken only by the rushing of air and noises from their surroundings, and Michael pushed his foot harder down on the accelerator.

 

The sun had finally fully emerged over the horizon before Stiles roused from the doze he had settled into. He woke with a large inhale of air and his eyes opening, fingers taut and white knuckled on each other as though he’d had a nightmare, though he hadn’t been deep enough into sleep to dream and his breathing had remained steady. Layers upon layers were built inside this boy, and Michael was eager to discover them all. He was not used to _wanting_. What he did now, stopping the angels from exterminating the humans, was just out of a sense of duty to his father as the eldest.

 

Now he had more reasons to save the humans – bright lights like Stiles. It was a visceral, human reaction. It wasn’t logical anymore, not duty but _desire_.

 

“I’m fucking starving,” Stiles muttered. “Where are we?”

 

“About two hours out of the city. I do not require food or sleep but I didn’t take into account that you would,” Michael admitted, and Stiles huffed a laugh. The boy then pulled out a slim phone from his back pocket and began typing away.

 

“Thank god for magic wifi,” he mumbled to himself. His fingers clicked over the keyboard quickly, sending vaguely reassuring messages to people named _Scottyboy_ , _Creeperwolf_ , _Strawberry Shortcake_ , _Batgirl_ and to a single emoji of a scarf. He then flicked over to a map and searched the single highway they were on for any signs of life.

 

“Looks like there should be a gas station about five miles up, we could stop for supplies?” Stiles asked. Michael didn’t reply, but clenched his jaw tightly. He was already on a tight schedule, he could feel that one of his fallen brothers was at least one hour ahead of them and did not know what catastrophe a single possessed human could make – they did not have time to slow down or stop.

 

“Dude,” Stiles said with raised eyebrows, obviously sensing Michael’s unwillingness to stop. “I’ll stock up on food for two days, I can sleep in the back, I can even grab a bottle to piss in if you’d like. It’ll take five minutes, I’m sure the world won’t end,” the boy joked. It made sense that the boy was human, and as tight as their schedule was, he would be a valuable ally in the battle and Michael did not want him to be running low on energy.

 

“Five minutes,” Michael sighed, pushing the accelerator right down to the floor of the car, and Stiles grinned.

 

It was four minutes and fifty-two seconds before Stiles hurried back into the car, dumping plastic bags full of food, drinks, a toothbrush, a packet of cigarettes and a few more necessities. He kicked his feet back up onto the dashboard as Michael peeled out of the gas station, trying to make up for lost time.

 

Stiles was halfway through a ham sandwich when he opened his mouth to open the question Michael had been anticipating for hours. “So how’s this apocalypse going to go down? Plagues of locusts? Fiery meteors?”

 

“The entire host of angels will descend to possess the weak-minded of your race to kill an unborn child that is to be the savior of humanity, on the orders of God,” Michael said bluntly, knowing no other way to put it.

 

Stiles became rigid in his seat, finishing the bite of the sandwich he was on but not moving to take another. Michael turned to see that the boy had gone pale, the blood drained from his face as his knuckles turned white, staring straight ahead like he couldn’t see the road in front of them. For minutes Stiles didn’t move a muscle, to the point where Michael wondered if he’d accidentally triggered some strange Spark defense mechanism, when Stiles moved a hand to the backseat and rifled about until his hand grabbed ahold of the packet of cigarettes.

 

With a click of his fingers he’d lit the cigarette, took a deep breath, and exhaled shakily into the car. The tobacco smoke swirled into the air, and Michael could see the trembling of the cigarette in Stiles’ shaking fingers. Finding out that God had given up on the human race was rather shocking news, but Michael did not think that Stiles was particularly religious and was unsure as to why his words had hit the young Spark so hard.

 

Michael was quiet as Stiles continued to take drags of his cigarette, exhaling the smoke to be caught by the rushing air outside the window, dragging the scent into the warm air. He listened as Stiles’ breathing slowly evened out, his exhales became smoother, the tremors ceased in his hands until he could hold the cigarette steadily from where it was perched between two of his fingers.

 

All was quiet, and then-

 

“I was possessed once,” Stiles admitted quietly. The boy looked straight ahead, colour returned to his face, blowing cigarette smoke from between his rosy lips with a perfect cupid’s bow. Michael wasn’t entirely sure what to say.

 

“It was a nogitsune. A powerful, thousand-year-old fox spirit that took over my mind and body. It made me kill, it made me hurt my friends, I felt as it twisted a sword through my best friend’s intestines,” Stiles said quietly, staring off into the distance. “It took me because of my Spark, because it made it more powerful than it had ever been, because I was vulnerable and nobody would ever expect that the being sowing chaos would be me. I killed Allison. Lydia brought her back again, but that didn’t seem to matter. Allison says she’s forgiven me, but…”

 

“You won’t be possessed by any of my brothers and sisters,” Michael said as the boy trailed off. Stiles laughed self-deprecatingly and took a deep drag of the cigarette.

 

“And how do you know that? I’ve been possessed before; I’m still scared of falling asleep. When I wake up I don’t even know if I’m in control of my own body. I find my fingers tapping like it did, always incessantly dragging it’s- _my_ fingers around, tapping on the hilt of the sword that had been stabbed straight through Scott. Even though it’s gone, its hold is still on me,” Stiles confessed, and Michael felt the doubt seep into the air.

 

Sparks were powerful because they had belief and willpower. If a Spark started to doubt themselves and their abilities…

 

“They will not possess you because they will target the weak-minded,” Michael replied firmly. “Those who lack conviction, motivation, are selfish and narrow-minded. You are none of those things, and therefore not even the strongest of them would dare approach you for fear of being burned out.”

 

Stiles turned to him, amber eyes glinting in the sunlight, vulnerable and so different from the confident, powerful and otherworldly creature that Michael had encountered in the darkened alleyways of Las Vegas.

 

“You think so?” Stiles asked.

 

“I know so,” Michael replied, looking straight into the boy’s eyes. Stiles searched him again, as if his eyes held the secrets of the universe, and whatever the boy found, he seemed to be reassured. His lips twisted at the sides, and he turned back to face the road ahead of them, and flicked the cigarette out of the window.

 

The next few hours were thick with silence.

 

*


End file.
